Friday, July 13, 2007

I've been in Soapland again!

But then what else is there to do when the only other alternative on a Friday night is the parish Charismatic Prayer Group?

I watched this evening's episode of Hollyoaks. It was the double wedding of two sisters from the only Catholic family in the village. You can tell they are a Catholic soap family because all the women are, shall we say, generous with their love (the mother has 6 children by 6 men), the boy is homosexual and there is a tacky statue of the Sacred Heart in their living room.

Why am I devoting precious blog space to this? Because of the liturgical and canonical mishaps in the script. The priest was wearing a surplus and stole (Church of England vestments) and must have said Mass wearing this as well because after the vows they shot to Communion where two non-Catholics and two non-practicing Catholics received Communion on the tongue. Don't you just love half-hearted research? I can see the meeting now:

'Caflicks eat ve bread in veir mouvs don't they?'

'Yeah, I 'eard the vicar puts in straight in'

'Righ', that's what we gotta do they innit?'

'Yeah, alrigh''

God preserve us from the rich and ignorant!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't that sort of thing drive you NUTS?! You'd think ONE person in the whole outfit would be a *practicing* Catholic. The operative word here is practicing. A friend of mine is was fit to be tied when he saw the movie "The Verdict" with Paul Newman. One duffus through the whole movie put on the biretta on every time with the side that DIDN't have a "handle" to the front.

How dumb these directors and scriptwriters seem. They have NO idea that (in the US at least) 25% of their audience says to themselves "Well, you dummies got it wrong, once again."

Same with stupid articles in the newspaper that let the most egregious errors slip past. NO ONE on that paper is a practicing Catholic? "well, since all Catholics think everyone not Catholic is going to hell...." and they always get the annulment thing wrong. "Well, because getting an annulment would make the children illegitimate....blah, blah."

Makes you want to scream. Oh, and if it's a "cop show" and the cops stop by to talk to ANYONE who has a cross or other religious item in their house...sure as shooting this person is always the guilty, guilty, guilty one. Law and Order is a particular offender on this.

["Look, watch, they'll come back to THAT guy again, because he has a cross on the wall." Friend: "Huh?" You: "Just watch." 10 minutes later, yep...turns out the one who had the cross wasn't just an innocent bystander...he's the perp. Friend: "What are you, psychic or something?" You: "No, I just know these dirtball scriptwriters and directors like the back of my hand."

If you want to REALLY fool the audience, have the Catholic with all the statues, crosses and rosaries be the innocent one, and the porno huckster the guilty one. That would be novelty.

PS....some of those charismatics will be parishioners too. Hate to say it, but maybe you should check in once in a while to see where they are coming from. You can substitute that for the weekly hair shirt. If you want ONE gin and tonic after...go for it...a man can only suffer so much!

Lord I apologize for that. Sorta.]

Anonymous said...

Hence I don't watch telly!

(But what did you think of Ballykissangel, from years back?)

Anonymous said...

Look, this is fiction. Get it into perspective. Even the use of the gay brother is simply to add anew storyline. If he was considering the priesthood, then it would be more true to life. Ultimately, there are more important things for Catholics to worry about and the vast majority of watchers wouldn't notice the mistakes anyway.
In Christ

Anonymous said...

How utterly awful!

Anonymous said...

Bet you wish you`d given the Charismatic Prayer Group a go now.

Anonymous said...

At least they might be able to spell 'surplice' correctly.